Bob
Your Opening Scream (September) gave another little push for the Avant browser.
Having tried it, and using standard Internet Explorer as the comparison, can you help on a couple of points?
1. Avant adds a couple of horizontal bars, one above the main area, one below. These reduce the 'real estate' of the main area by (in my case) about 5% - not much, but its a couple of lines that have to be scrolled rather than viewed directly. The Avant Preferences don't seem to include customising the Avant desktop features - any ideas?
2. My most used browser feature is the Back button. In Avant this is about 50% smaller, which means more accuracy when flicking the mouse pointer towards the LH top corner. If there is a way of removing the unwanted bars, can the Back button be enlarged?
Ray Liffen
Dear Ray
Right-clicking on an unused part of the toolbar will bring up a toolbar button to decide which bars you want showing, or you could look under the 'View' function.
It will also show 'Customise buttons' where you can choose 'Large Icons'.
You can also 'tear off' these toolbars, merge them, make them into one long bar which has to be scrolled, or position them anywhere on the screen you like.
Hth
Rb
PS Try pressing F11 and see what happens 
(Press F11 again to undo the effect).
[This message has been edited by RichardB (edited 30 July 2003).]
does anyone know if the google toolbar works with avant...?
Richard
Thanks for the tips. Funnily enough, I'd Rt-clicked on a toolbar before I put in the query, but I clicked the wrong area and got up a different menu
Ray L
Yes, google toolbar works with avant
groovi! i'll give it a try then!
Ray,
I can't say I'm troubled by the size of the back button, cos I use two other methods to go back.
Normally (and this works with IE, too), I just press the backspace key - which I find much quicker (and is one little contribution to cutting down on my excessive use of the mouse).
Oh, and Shift+Backspace move you forward.
The other way to go back is just to right click any where in the main part of the window and select "back" - which sits at the top of the pop-up list. Forward is in the list, too.
These shortcuts also work in IE.
Bob C
Thanks Bob
Ray
Avant also has mouse "gestures" for going backwards and forwards -
hold right+click left for back
hold left+click right for forward
(it's easier than it sounds!)
Some mice with programmable side buttons can do this anyway but Avant allows you to do it with any mouse.
Cheers
Paul
Since I discovered Avant, the only thing that I have found that needs fixing is that it has a memory leak.
If I leave it running for a couple of days the memory the .exe uses can grow to over 200Mb, kill the .exe and restart and it is ok for a few days again. I have emailed the writer and he is looking into fixing it.
Other than that it's brill.
BTW the Google bar seems to work fine I just dont tend to use it as my start page is www.google.com
Also there tends to be a new build nearly avery few weeks. Worth checking you have the latest.
rgds
GG
this thing's great! even better since i'm the only one that uses it on the family PC, which means i can leave all my sites open in avant and get instant access to them all!
GG, i tend not to use the google toolbar for searching because i can't customise it to search uk sites only. the main use i find is for highlighting or finding words on a page quickly...
mark.
i just had a look at that memory leak, i can see it swallowing up upto 100K (i assume it's bytes, but MS neglected to tell anyone!) a second just sitting minimised on the taskbar with a few sites open, but idle... worrying...
that's better, it's leveled out a bit now...
[This message has been edited by cstv (edited 13 August 2003).]
question...
if i've got too many pages open for them all to fit on the the "tabbed" bar at once, is there a way to get to them without closing some that are visible...?
i hope that makes sense...
cheers,
mark.
quote:Originally posted by cstv:
this thing's great! even better since i'm the only one that uses it on the family PC, which means i can leave all my sites open in avant and get instant access to them all!
Don't forget you can use the "groups" feature to save a selection of sites and then open them all again later with one click.
Also, the tabbed bar at the bottom should just add an extra line of buttons when the first fills up - is that what you meant? Otherwise use the green toolbar buttons to move along the row of buttons (or shortcuts ctrl+up/ctrl+down).
Hope this helps
Cheers
Paul
Just realised that the built-in search window becomes VERY useful if you select to "Always create new window for search result".
This is from the Tools Menu>Avant Browser Options>New Window
Before discovering this two minutes ago, my way of doing a google search was to click the New button (or do Ctl N), and then click on the home button.
Doing it directly in the search window and having this open a new window does this all in one go.
But when is the author going to write a front end for MS Word, so that has a tabbed interface???
I'd be happy to pay up for that, just as I was for Avant Browser.
Bob C
cheers Paul, it's working now, but it went a bit odd before... oh well...
Yes Bob, the automatic creation of a new window for searches is great! one of my favourite things about google toolbar in fact...
oh, and thanks for the reminder - i still need to make my donation.
mark.
this looks good... i just discovered the tools/clear records section of the menus, giving the ability to instantly clear specific parts of history and auto complete... very useful when you've typed a page in wrong that actually exists, so get stored... www.goggle.com for instance...
Hi there all, I am about to download and try avant browser after reading all the positive comments. Is there any documentation available to help the learning process?
Cheers BobH
BobH,
There's not a lot to learn, and most of it is available as on-screen help and tips.
Bob C
Hi Bob, thanks for the reply. When I have time in the next few days I will give it a go.
Cheers BobH
quote:Originally posted by bcrabtree:
But when is the author going to write a front end for MS Word, so that has a tabbed interface???
indeed... i don't know about Word, but it must be pretty simple to apply avant's interface to windows generally - especially since internet explorer is so integeral to windows as MS claim...
i keep middle clicking on things on the start bar expecting them to close! and that hold-right, click-left thing has made my left hand (which usually can be seen reaching for the backspace key when navigating) very lazy and somewhat redundant... i though about having it removed until i realised that Adobe haven't managed to get all of the functions of premiere, photoshop and after effects on one mouse... yet... oh well... 
mark.